Lara's life is also dealt with in considerable detail. Lara, whose full name is Larissa Feodorovna Guishar (later Antipova), is the daughter of a bourgeois mother. She becomes involved in an affair with Viktor Komarovsky, a powerful lawyer with political connections, who both repulses and attracts her. Lara is engaged to Pavel "Pasha" Antipov, an idealistic young student who becomes involved in Bolshevism through his father. To gain independence from Komarovsky, Lara spends three years working as a live-in nanny for a wealthy family (the Kologrivovs). Upon Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000164 EndHTML:0000003042 StartFragment:0000002762 EndFragment:0000003006 SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/mytymouse1/Desktop/names

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Zhivago briefly encounters Lara while assisting his mentor who has been called by Komarovsky to the scene of the attempted suicide of Lara's mother in response to Lara's and Komarovsky's scandalous relationship. Zhivago also sees Lara at the Christmas party where she tries to shoot Komarovsky. Lara and Zhivago truly meet following a roadside encounter between First World War troop columns, one group being miserable retreating Russian Army deserting veterans and the other group are new recruits bound for the hopeless conditions at the Front. Lara has been serving as nurse while searching for her assumed-dead husband Antipov. The two fall in love as they serve together in a makeshift field hospital. They do not consummate their relationship until much later, meeting in the town of Yuriatin after the war.

Pasha and Komarovsky continue to play important roles in the story. Pasha is assumed killed in World War I, but is actually captured by the Germans and escapes. He joins the Bolsheviks and becomes Strelnikov (the shooter), a fearsome Red Army general who becomes infamous for executing White prisoners (hence his nickname). However, he is never a true Bolshevik and yearns for the fighting to be over so he can return to Lara. (The film version would change his character significantly, making him a hard-line Bolshevik.)

Another major character is Liberius, commander of the "Forest Brotherhood", the Red Partisan band which conscripts Yuri into service. Liberius is depicted as loud-mouthed and vain, a dedicated and heroic revolutionary, who bores Yuri with his continuous lectures on the justice of their cause and the inevitability of their victory. He is also addicted to cocaine.

Komarovsky reappears towards the end of the story. He has gained some influence in the Bolshevik government and been appointed head of the Far Eastern Republic, a Bolshevik puppet state in Siberia. He offers Zhivago and Lara transit out of Russia. They initially refuse, but by lying about Antipov's death Komarovsky privately persuades Zhivago that it is in Lara's best interests to leave; Zhivago convinces Lara to go with Komarovsky, telling her (falsely) that he will follow her shortly.

Meanwhile, Antipov/Strelnikov falls from grace, loses his position in the Red Army, and returns to Varykino, near Yuriatin, where he hopes to find Lara. She, however, has just left with Komarovsky. After having a lengthy conversation with Zhivago, he commits suicide and is found the next morning by Zhivago. In the movie, he is captured 5 miles outside of Yuriatin. On the way to his execution he grabs a pistol from a guard and kills himself. Zhivago's life and health go downhill from this point; he lives with another woman and has two children with her, plans numerous writing projects but does not finish them, and is increasingly absent-minded, erratic, and unwell. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire   Lara eventually returns to Russia on the day of Zhivago's funeral. She gets Yevgraf, his half brother, to try to find her daughter but then disappears.

During World War II Zhivago's old friends Nika Dudorov and Misha Gordon meet up. One of their discussions revolves around a local laundress named Tonya, a bezprizornaya or parentless child, one of many left by the Civil War, and her resemblance to Zhivago. Much later they meet over the first edition of Zhivago's  Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire  poems. Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000164 EndHTML:0000003042 StartFragment:0000002762 EndFragment:0000003006 SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/mytymouse1/Desktop/names

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Other major characters include Tonya Gromeko, Zhivago's wife, and her parents Alexander and Anna, with whom Zhivago lived after he lost his parents as a child. Yevgraf (Evgraf) Zhivago, Yuri's younger illegitimate half-brother (son of his father and a Mongolian princess), is a mysterious figure who gains power and influence with the Bolsheviks and helps his brother evade arrest throughout the course of the story.

The book is packed full of odd coincidences; characters disappear and reappear seemingly at random, encountering each other in the most unlikely places.

Pasternak's description of the singer Kubarikha in the chapter "Iced Rowanberries" is almost identical to the description of the gypsy singer Nadezhda Plevitskaya (1884–1940) by Sofia Satina (sister-in-law and cousin of Sergei Rachmaninoff). Since Rachmaninoff was a friend of the Pasternak family, and Plevitskaya a friend of Rachmaninoff, Plevitskaya was probably Pasternak's "mind image" when he wrote the chapter; something which also shows how Pasternak had roots in music.